A queen is defined eight ways by Merriam-Webster—among them the wife of a king, a fertile female bee, a goddess or a thing personified as female and having supremacy in a specified realm. All include a female identifier except for this one: “the most privileged piece of each color in a set of chessmen having the power to move in any direction across any number of unoccupied squares.” Privilege. Color. Power. Space. Whoever said life is a game of chess couldn’t be more accurate.

These four words are ever present in civil rights movement conversations. At the forefront of these conversations are activists fighting to claim space and redefine the country’s race relations. Within our generation of revolutionaries are four Chicago artists of color who are raising up marginalized identities in a media-driven world that gravely lacks representations of black, brown and queer-identifying individuals. A director, a professor, a printmaker, a playwright—they are Chicago’s movers and shakers.

The first project in this three-part series that runs through Monday introduces Elijah McKinnon and Aymar Jean Christian of “Two Queens in a Kitchen,” a queer-focused cooking show released by Open TV. Join us tomorrow and Monday to hear about Kristiana Rae Colón of Black Sex Matters and Angela Davis Fegan of “The Lavender Menace Poster Project,” both of whom are pictured above and on the cover of Thursday’s print edition alongside McKinnon and Christian.

Lenny Gilmore / RedEye

Elijah McKinnon, 'Two Queens in a Kitchen' creator and director.

Elijah McKinnon, 'Two Queens in a Kitchen' creator and director.

(Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

Lenny Gilmore / RedEye

Aymar Jean Christian, head of development at Open TV.

Aymar Jean Christian, head of development at Open TV.

(Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)

Most ideas born in kitchens end up on plates, but Elijah McKinnon had bigger plans. From a rant during a boozy brunch with friends came “Two Queens in a Kitchen,” a nine-part queer-focused web series released in August featuring Chicago artists and activists of color who discuss politics, culture and art while cooking.

“Historically in a lot of black and brown communities, coming together around the kitchen is a very holistic and spiritual experience,” said McKinnon, the series’ creator and director, who uses the pronouns they/them/their. The concept for the show made a lot of sense to them: Film two artists from different backgrounds in a kitchen doing the things we all do in kitchens, hanging out, making snacks and having challenging conversations.

The series is produced through Open TV, an online platform for alternative television projects that focus on communities often left out of mainstream TV and film. They are projects by and about people who identify as queer, as trans, as cis (non-trans) women, as people of color or as a combination of those identities.

Each episode of “Two Queens in a Kitchen” pairs two guests of different artistries—a mixed media artist and a DJ, a filmmaker and a visual artist and yoga instructor, a burlesque performer and a hip-hop artist who works for the public library. Throughout the show, they all prepare snacks of their choosing (yes, the recipes are included).

McKinnon’s vision was scientific, much like cooking: “You’re mixing all of these things together, and those particular elements become something so much larger when they’re combined.”

Photo courtesy of Zakkiyyah Najeeba

Darling Shear makes caprese lox in episode two of 'Two Queens in a Kitchen.'

Darling Shear makes caprese lox in episode two of 'Two Queens in a Kitchen.'

(Photo courtesy of Zakkiyyah Najeeba)

McKinnon, 24, who’s also head of marketing for the platform, said the series is the most all-encompassing of Open TV’s diverse audience, as it features several artists who have worked on past Open TV projects that are more focused on one community.

The independent platform is a research project started by Aymar Jean Christian, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University and head of development at Open TV, who wanted to study alternative models for TV series development that focused on people who are marginalized in television controlled largely by a handful of conglomerates with networks.

“I saw both on TV and in the independent web series market a lack of representation of people who were not white, straight and cisgender [and shows] that were artistic and intersectional,” said Christian, 32.

HUNGRY FOR REPRESENTATION

Since March 2015, Open TV has released six narrative and documentary series and four pilots, totaling 9.5 hours of programming.

Part of what “Two Queens in a Kitchen” aims to do is raise up real people of color having real conversations presented in a way that’s more dimensional than the hypersexualized, villainous and tokenized characters often portrayed in mainstream TV and film, McKinnon said.

Sam Bailey is a writer, actor and filmmaker who created the award-nominated series “You’re So Talented,” presented by Open TV. Featured in episode four of “Two Queens in a Kitchen,” she said in part one about the reception of her show, “people are just hungry for that type of content, they want to see themselves.”

She talks about a conversation with a biracial actor friend who said that she is extremely judgmental of biracial characters on television. “It’s because we’re so not used to seeing ourselves that you want that one representation to be everything, which is a difficult thing,” Bailey said.

Sam Bailey & Kiam Marcelo Junio in episode four, part one of "Two Queens in a Kitchen."

Sam Bailey & Kiam Marcelo Junio in episode four, part one of "Two Queens in a Kitchen."

McKinnon identifies with that reaction. They believe that the authenticity of a character can be skewed if the content isn’t produced by people who share their experience and identity. “I don’t just want to see a black character that’s hired as help,” they said. “That’s not fun for me, … and I’m supposed to be thankful, but that goes back to being conditioned to judge and being hypersensitive of how our bodies are being presented.”

Christian said that while representations of queer-identifying and black and brown communities are getting some in-depth recognition, writers are still reluctant to present those individuals’ complexities. Though single episodes or scenes of shows might focus on some of those complications, they’re still underexplored on the outskirts of the narrative.

“I think that is very frustrating to viewers who identify with those characters because everybody’s life is complex and people want their experiences affirmed,” he said. “You have to survive as a queer black person, you have to find love as a queer black person, and if you grew up in a family that wasn’t like that, where do you get a vision, a model of how to live your life?”

He cited “Orange Is the New Black” creator Jenji Kohan’s NPR interview in which she said that shows about black and Latina women don’t sell to network television, but that she could tell those stories through the perspective of a mostly straight white woman. Even though the show prominently features black and Latina women who are queer and trans, the main character, Piper, has more emotional range than the other characters, Christian said.

Overall, TV networks have yet to address the “full range of life of queer and people of color,” Christian said. Even within queer-focused or black-focused shows, he said he’s often upset with the lack of representation of other identities. “The problem is intersectionality,” he said.

McKinnon noted Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) and Shonda Rhimes (“Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy”), producers of color who are film and TV pioneers. “I respect the work that they are doing to make space within a larger cultural context, but to be honest, that thing is hard and will always be hard when we live in a world that was not designed to … uplift black and/or queer experiences,” they said. “If you live in the margin or even bordering it, it’s not something that media was designed to capture.”

Photo courtesy of Zakkiyyah Najeeba

On the set of 'Two Queens in a Kitchen.'

On the set of 'Two Queens in a Kitchen.'

(Photo courtesy of Zakkiyyah Najeeba)

Open TV’s goal isn’t to “hold hands” with mass media, but rather to redefine what that looks like, McKinnon said. Christian backed that up, adding that Open TV isn’t interested in a relationship with legacy media groups. “The goal of Open TV is to support artists whose communities have been marginalized by the mass media,” he said.

Christian hopes Open TV not only gives its audience representation that affirms their experiences but also encourages Chicago-based viewers to get out and support other communities they’re introduced to through the shows.

“That’s something that TV doesn’t do. You can watch ‘Orange Is the New Black’ and see different kinds of people, but what can you do after that to understand more about those people?” he asked. “By looking at TV on a small scale, it opens up so much … about the artistry of the episode and who made it.”

LIVING FREE

Open TV’s programming, including “Two Queens in a Kitchen,” flies in the face of media erasures. If something isn’t represented, it does not exist, McKinnon said. But they know that not to be true. For them, Open TV ensures that space on the internet is “not only being made but claimed” by queer-identifying people, people of color and anyone who lives in the margins, which is what their series aims to do.

It’s not unlike the digital activism that has characterized the Black Lives Matter movement. McKinnon emphasized the movement’s ability to keep media at the forefront of the conversation, highlighting the queer feminist black leaders of this era. While black, brown, queer and transgender people have always been part of civil rights movements, they aren’t slipping through the cracks this time. “If we are able to set free the most marginalized communities within our communities then we are able to set others free,” McKinnon said.

But the most natural form of activism to McKinnon doesn’t live on the internet. It’s about gathering and celebrating black lives, something “Two Queens in a Kitchen” does well. “Those true moments of healing don’t come from a tweet in my perspective,” they said. “They come from those intimate, raw moments that can’t be edited or distilled.”

In part one of episode five, hip-hop artist Roy Kinsey asks burlesque performer MS MR JR, who doesn’t have a cellphone, how they live without one. Looking directly in the camera, MS MR JR confidently replies, “free.” Christian said that moment speaks volumes about Open TV, whose mission through the platform is to highlight many identities to show audiences that there are different ways to live.

Roy Kinsey & Ms Mr Jr in episode five, part one of "Two Queens in a Kitchen."

Roy Kinsey & Ms Mr Jr in episode five, part one of "Two Queens in a Kitchen."

“People are very scared of their identity because as a culture we want to fit in. Queer people have to come up with a way to be themselves and be free and healthy and love themselves,” he said. “I think everyone at Open TV knows a little bit about what that’s about, what it’s like to live free against all odds, and I think that’s what ‘Two Queens in a Kitchen’ is about.”

That’s exactly what McKinnon hopes viewers take away from the show, that people who need it most find a bit of themselves.

“The reference of ‘queen’ is celebratory. It’s making space and uplifting the divine, the goddess that’s in all of us, so I hope that when folks watch that material, they are aware that that energy lives within all of us,” they said. “The people who are in the series are … in constant pursuit of that, constantly trying to become more queenly and more excellent within their own regard that’s rooted in self-love or self-worth. And that is the core of ‘Two Queens in a Kitchen.’ ”